(Military Times) Op-Ed: Polish Missile Joke

[unhappycamper]

Polish Missile Joke
Jeff Huber | November 19, 2008

This Polish missile defense system walks into a bar one afternoon and orders six shots of vodka and a beer. The bartender says, "How can you afford to get drunk in the middle of a business day?" and the Polish missile defense system says, "I don't work."

And lo it has come to pass that as the End of Bush Days draws near, Dick Cheney and the neocons are taking their last shot at instigating Cold War II by deploying a ballistic missile defense system that doesn't work to defend against ballistic missiles that don't work either.

~snip~

We shoved a missile defense system down Poland's throat to get back at the Russians. When the Russians complained that the missile defense system is a threat to their security, we said the system's purpose is to defend North America and Western Europe from a ballistic missile attack by Iran—the same Iran whose ballistic missiles are something other than reliable and who might have an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that can reach North America by 2015 but probably won't. (If they wanted an ICBM they could have had one in 2003.)

Russia retaliated by threatening to deploy the short range Iskander missile system to Baltic enclave Belarus that will "neutralize" the Polish ballistic missile defense system because the Iskander is only quasiballistic.

Remarkably, young Mr. Bush's pet gerbil seems to be the only player in this bumper car derby who has his head on straight. On November 14, France's President Nicolas Sarkozy said that the missile defense deployment to Poland will be a "move backward" in European stability. Maybe Sarkozy finally came to his senses, or maybe it finally dawned on him that come January he'll have to start living in a new seat of power and it was time to stop kissing the old one.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,179517,00.html?wh=news